


Touch of Magic

by PaddyWack



Series: Touch of Magic [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, M/M, Obscurial, Snippet, creative liberties were taken, hufflepuffs like their food, teenage probs, you're a wizard eddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 16:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16453565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaddyWack/pseuds/PaddyWack
Summary: He's a teenage wizard and everything is strange.





	Touch of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Creative liberties were abused repeatedly with this. A few things of note:  
> -Eddie attends Hogwarts because his IIvermorny letters were lost in America due to his constant moving around (see: creative liberties)  
> -ignoring science of obscurials for something different  
> -Hufflepuff is the best house
> 
> Depending on how this goes, I'd like to take this into a series of snapshots of Hogwarts life. Let me know what you think?

The sorting hat leads them jauntily through the school’s song with an enthusiasm matched by the eager, newly inducted first years. Afterward, Headmistress Chen gives them all her welcoming speech, including the usual dire warning that students must not venture into the forbidden forest – and here Eddie makes sure she cannot stare pointedly in his direction by ducking behind one of his fellow Hufflepuffs – followed by a brief introduction of the other professors, and, finally, with a wiggle of her fingers, allows leave to dig into the newly materialized start-of-the-term feast.

 

Eddie sets to piling his plate with roast chicken, lamb chops, boiled potatoes, and a fat slice of Shepherd’s pie. The platter of Yorkshire pudding holds his curiosity for barely a moment before he decides on the more familiar bread rolls instead. He tops it all with a ladle-full of rich, steaming gravy that dribbles off his plate and onto the table.

 

“Geez, Eddie,” Maria teases from her seat across from him. “I know we’re Hufflepuffs, but you’re just making us look bad now.”

 

He grins, cheeks puffed full like a chipmunk, and shrugs. “I’m a growing boy,” he manages to say between bites, shoveling the food into his mouth like he’s a starving sixteen year-old with a bottomless pit for a stomach.

 

Which, to be fair, he kind of _is_ a starving sixteen year-old with a bottomless pit for a stomach. It isn’t entirely his fault. One of the prevailing side effects of being host to an Obscurus is a wickedly speed-lined metabolism and a gnawing hunger that rarely dissipates.

 

He doesn’t mind too much, though. Not when the common room is, like, three steps from the kitchens, and after the whole gambling fiasco in his fourth year with the house elves, he’s pretty much got an open invitation inside whenever he likes. Plus, his Obscurus kind of curbs it every now and then when he gives it chocolate.

 

As if summoned by his thoughts, he feels its presence float to the surface and spike his hunger a little more. It brushes against his consciousness with a sense of mulish impatience.

 

_Eddie. We want to be outside._

He rolls his eyes at the whining tone and spoons some peas and carrots onto his plate. “Later,” he mutters, grateful that the usual din of the Great Hall is loud enough to cover his voice.

 

_We want to go now._

 

“Yeah, well, we can’t.”

 

“Can’t what?”

 

“Huh?”

 

Maria raises an eyebrow. “Can’t what?” she repeats, sipping her pumpkin juice and looking at him curiously.

 

“Can’t – uh, can’t…get enough of this roast beef!” He spears a helping on his fork for emphasis and Maria giggles, shaking her head with amused disbelief at his insatiable appetite.

 

He waits for her to become distracted by another housemate before hissing under his breath, “I promised you we would go tonight, okay? Just wait a little longer.”

 

He feels it rumbling through his chest with frustrated acceptance, and fights back a grin at the childishness of its behavior. Sensing his amusement at its expense, it vindictively influences his knee to bang sharply against the underside of the table, earning a pained yelp in response.

 

“Dick,” Eddie growls, rubbing his abused knee and waving off concern from the other students. “No dessert for you.”

 

It gives the equivalent of a derisive sniff, knowing full well neither of them ever skip the truffles or multi-layered chocolate lava cake. That would be downright unthinkable. Plus, Eddie knows it’s been looking forward to having it all summer, and he doesn’t have the heart to deny it such a trivial thing. Even though it means they will likely end up at the dentist’s office for the entire fall break as a result.

 

The things he does for love.

 

*

 

Like any Obscurial, Eddie manifested an Obscurus when he was young as a result of suppressing his magic. With both of his parents being of the non-magic persuasion, and having no earthly clue why their son sneezed fireworks, they eventually packed it up from their nice studio apartment in San Francisco to seek help from a distant relative three times removed on his mom’s side, who she kind of remembered having hiccupping fits that produced bubbles.

 

Or something.

 

Anyway, they ended up in London with crazy Uncle Gerry. Eddie was fourteen and dealing with a lot. He was enrolled in Hogwarts late and began his fourth year at a serious disadvantage to the other students, what with having no idea how to perform basic magic, and also harboring what Uncle Gerry had gleefully dubbed as Eddie’s ‘hormone monster’.

 

You know, because nobody knew what the hell that thing was that turned Eddie’s eyes white and leaked black smoke from his ears. And might’ve leveled a playground at one point in a temper. Teenagers were so violent these days.

 

So, he didn’t make friends very easily which gave him a lot of time alone, and subsequently a lot of time figuring out what was living inside him. With some special interest from Headmistress Chen (consisting mostly of forceful meditation), Eddie eventually learned what an Obscurial was, and how to – more or less – control an Obscurus and its violent outbursts.

 

He’s not sure how or when he started considering the thing a friend, especially since it was supposed to _kill him,_ but there you go. They managed some form of existence built on mutual dependency and crippling loneliness, and damn if Eddie didn’t grow to love the little bastard.

 

And, judging by the affection that sometimes spreads from his chest to the rest of his body, he’s pretty sure it feels the same.

 

*

 

They sneak out after curfew and make it down to the lake without being spotted. It’s warm, but there’s enough of a breeze that they don’t feel too hot in their robes, and the ground isn’t even damp when they take a seat on the bank.

 

Eddie feels his Obscurus hum with excitement and, with a prickle between his shoulder blades, manifest as a black, cloud-like form stretching from his shoulder to peer out over the lake with him.

 

_We like it here, Eddie._

“I know,” he says. Through their bond (or whatever its called), he can sense the change in the air. It’s easier to be _them_ here, at Hogwarts, as opposed to the crushing press of the city. He supposes it has something to do with witches and wizards not having to hide their nature here among so many of their own kind. Everybody can kind of let go.

 

_Anne was sitting with that idiot Ravenclaw again._

Eddie winces at the reminder. “They _are_ in the same House. Nothing wrong with them sitting together.”

 

_We are better than him. We could eat him._

“We can’t eat Dan, all right?” He scowls and tosses a pebble into the lake, squinting when a ripple further out suggests something moving just beneath the surface. “Besides, he’s nice to her. She seems happy.”

 

His Obscurus disagrees, pointing out that she had been just as happy with them last year.

 

“That was _before_ we roped her into your little forbidden forest escapade.” He frowns at the black mass accusingly. “We were nearly expelled.”

 

_Pussy._

“Seriously?” It roils before him, smug at having expanded their vocabulary. “Fine. You want to do cheap insults? You’re – “

 

_You wouldn’t dare!_

“…a freaking parasite!”

 

His own fist flies up and punches him in the face. _Take it back!_

“You started it!” They scuffle on the bank, and Eddie knows they must look ridiculous because it’s just him fighting with, well, himself. Still, probably not the strangest thing that has happened on this school’s grounds. They roll back and forth, fighting for control, and wildly swinging limbs at various other body parts with sloppy precision.

 

Eventually they exhaust themselves and sprawl in the grass in a mess of yellow and black robes, slightly bruised and with a stinging jaw. Eddie feels his Obscurus pouting, boiling under his skin unhappily.

 

“Proud of yourself?” he asks sarcastically, flexing his fingers to make sure he’s the one piloting.

 

_You’re stupid._

He snorts. “Wow. And to think I snuck a chocolate frog out here just for you.”

 

_…you’re still stupid._

Despite the attitude, he feels his Obscurus begrudgingly start to soothe the aches and pains littering his body, and then wait expectantly for the promised treat. Eddie huffs a laugh and sits up. He dusts off the bits of grass and sand that cling to his robes and digs out the candy from an inside pocket.

 

“You’re, like, the worst date ever, you know that?” he quips, tearing the package open with his teeth.

 

His Obscurus flexes inside his chest, intrigued at the choice of expression. He feels his cheeks heat up a little bit and tries to distract them both by taking a bite of the wriggling chocolate.

 

_This is a date._

It isn’t a question, and the statement is delivered with even more smugness than when it had managed to use official slang terms. Eddie rolls his eyes, momentarily regretting his words; it will never let him take it back.

 

“Sure,” he mumbles eventually around a bite, and swallows with a bit of difficulty. “If you want.”

 

It vibrates with amusement at his poor attempt at deflection, and then moves with reassuring warmth through his chest and down the arm not holding the candy to curl through his fingers. He tightens his grip unconsciously, and then flushes harder. He can sense it grinning at him, clearly enjoying his embarrassment.

 

Neither of them say much as Eddie finishes the frog and leans back on his elbows, fingers still clutched around the mass of shadow that shouldn’t be solid, and yet somehow is. They stare out across the lake, its surface undulating as the monster beneath goes about its nightly excursions. When he starts to nod off, his Obscurus rouses them with a lazy rumbling, and they make their way back to the castle and the promise of a fluffy mattress.

 

He falls asleep thinking that perhaps starting the term off with a budding crush on a black cloud of tempered rage (that also happens to share his brain space, no less) is possibly putting his foot in it and spelling disaster for the remainder of his sixth year.

 

So, pretty par for the course, really.


End file.
